Effective
(adj.) producing or capable of producing an intended result or having a
striking effect; exerting force or influence; works well as a means or remedy.

Can
we apply this definition to advertising? Carla Hendra, co-CEO of Ogilvy tried
to capture the heart of the audience with a definition of “an effective online
ad” in her address at the FOOA conference, beginning with a few cryptic phrases
for us to remember like

Video is the new television.

Text is the new print.

Mobile is the
new outdoor.

Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.

She then asked, “Is Google the new ad agency?” A few stifled
moans from the crowd, like someone had said a bad joke. BTW, there truly was
anti-Goog tension simmering in Gotham Hall: when Kim Malone, director of
AdSense sales and operations spoke about adapting advertising models to the web
and started talking about Cost Per Action and video ads, the questions started
flying, and for a moment I thought the rotten tomatoes would to. She made sure
to inform us that she’d “be shot” if she let certain bits of info slip, which
only whetted our interest, in a non-jealous, friendly way of course. J

In terms of video, Carla’s sources tell her that “If it’s 9
seconds or less, it’s the King of Click-Through.” Other secrets: Size Matters,
Put a Face On It, and less catchy tips like logo placement right and above, get
to the point as soon as possible, and grab attention with rich media. Kid’s
play. 

But look at this example that she used to show the
logistical complexity of today’s world of democratized media, where “any
schmuck with a camera” (my words, not hers) can make a spoof that gets more
exposure through YouTube than the original ad.

Case study: Check out the Campaign for Real Beauty that produced Dove
Evolution and the subsequent, and more likely, Slob
Evolution.

Is spoof publicity still publicity? And moreover, does it
add, or take away from the effectiveness of the original?

ClickZ reports that a recent study by the Web Analytics Association (WAA) shows that 69% of web analytics professionals feel that most people in their companies don’t understand their data. Half of the survey respondents also said they are find web analytics "difficult" and are currently looking for a new job.

Why is this? According to Eric Petersen of Web Analytics Demystified, it is the organization’s "tendency to handle Web analytics in an ad-hoc and unstructured manner" and furthermore, the failure to act on the data they do receive – if they understand it at all, that is.

Check out his video with Jeremiah Owyang – who is not a bullfrog – on measuring social media. It’s a whole new ballgame: how do you measure the user’s engagement with the content i.e. how they react, interact, and their subsequent actions? There are limitations, he admits, but have no fear my fellow digital marketers – he’s working on it.

If it’s in the New York Post, it must be true.

Today’s doomsaying article yells of a drop in the growth of U.S. ad expenditures to just 1.7 percent ($152.3 billion) in 2007, down from the previous forecast of 2.6 percent. That’s the weakest since the ad recession of 2001. They’re blaming the Olympics-election combo of 2006 as the reason for the downer.

Here’s an upper: online ad spending is projected to grow 16%. So that’s where the money is going! Ad budgets are shifting, shifting. Jason Jaramillo of Adotas writes:

This is a trend that seems to be gaining strength as those in the
industry who plan marketing campaigns seek to reach their target
audiences through a richer diversity of media. In most aspects it is
the degree of interactivity that determines our positive response to
any form of advertisement.

Apparently, in the brave new world we live in, markets will be determined less and less by the push of marketers and advertisers, and more and more by the pull of consumers.  In other words, companies can now use the interactive nature of the internet to listen to their customers wants as opposed to telling customers about faux-needs.

Even if he weren’t completely right, I’d still vote him in on the basis of the use of faux. It was big in the late nineties, but lost steam circa 2001 – right around the same time of the ad recession, I’d say. Coincidence?

Who doesn’t love an Australian? Especially a sick one, who
immediately apologizes for his freaky accent and “flu-like fogginess” – or did he
say frogginess? And when Darren Rowse of ProBlogger got right to the point,
saying that he was going to talk about how to monetize a blog, we were glad for
the gumption that brought him all the way from the land down under to 36^th
and Broadway. A long way from home, and much appreciated.

Most bloggers, he noted, don’t make any money. Thirty
percent make less than $10 a month, and the majority make only a little bit
more. The usual revenue channels of AdSense or Amazon affiliate ads, though
easy to use and accessible, are simply not effective for bloggers whose traffic
is at such minimal numbers. Peanuts. However, it is difficult to find
sponsorships and establish direct connections with advertisers, though the
desire is there on both ends. Advertisers admit that blogging is a risky space
to be involved in, but have to face the reality of a growing trend and
possibilities of highly targeted, niche audiences. Blog readers, as Darren
pointed out, are also fiercely loyal; many spend 10 hours a week or more on the
same sites.

Henry Copeland of Blogads, who spoke the day before, had
given some good background on such readers, focusing particularly on the
election of 2004 and political blogs that suddenly started to carry some weight
among the electorate. The “secret sauce”, as he put it, was the transition from
vertical, hermetically sealed hubs, like the New York Times, Washington Post,
etc. to swarms of media, with millions of ideas being bounced off of each other
every day until it becomes difficult to establish not only who said it first,
but what they meant. The positive result of this, however, is a blending of
ideas and of course, the birth of the “citizen journalist.”

The question arose, during a presentation by Ted Murphy,
founder of Pay-Per-Post, the controversial service that allows 6500 advertisers
to auction "opportunities" to 27,000 bloggers. At heart, they’re looking for
advertorials, sponsored content, guns for hire, if you will – and with $7 million in their pocket from the second round of financing, they might just suceed in converting even the most staunch opposer. (Of which there are many.) 

Although Murphy
put up a good fight for his cause, you can imagine some of the grumblings that
occurred: real bloggers don’t accept cash for product promotion. Homey don’t PLAY that!

He doesn’t live in a van down by the river, but he does have
a barrel-like laugh and vivacious gestures that would scare any teenage kid
into surrendering their ziplocked baggie of California-grown weed to a
concerned Phil Hartman – rest his soul. But maybe it’s not healthy to compare
everyone to Saturday Night Live characters.

Greg Stuart, former CEO and President of the Interactive
Advertising Bureau, came out swinging at the Future of Online Advertising
conference in New York last week.
Being a woman, the first thing I noticed about him was his hair: it is now of
the long persuasion. The next thing I noticed about him was his immense energy
– the man nearly leaped off the stage, eager he was to convey his message. At 9:15 am, which for West Coasters is actually 6:15, maybe it was exactly what we needed.
Like many public speakers, he began with a sad and shocking statistic: over
$112 billion of US ad spending is wasted. We know, we know, test it first. It’s
certainly cheap enough to do. He then gave an example of an agency “evaluation”
of a recent campaign that gained 600,000 clicks – “We told the client it was
great so it was great.”

Sound bites and Dilbert cartoons aside, it was a PowerPoint
for the rest to live up to. He suggested applying innovation theory to
marketing techniques, 70-20-10 style, with the 10% put towards developing
totally new ideas; he used the example of Google’s allowance of a certain
number of free days for employees to work on self-directed, independent
projects – but Greg, that’s just for the engineers! What Would a Marketer Do
(WWMD) with that free time?

It wouldn’t have been complete without a catchy
alliteration: in this case, an M-ification of the “Three Things to Get Right”:
Motivations, Messaging, and Media. Marvelous.